


Call Forth Chaos

by thermal_detonhater



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Dystopia Inspired AU with some canon elements, F/M, POV Alternating, Post-Nuclear War, Rated for Violence and Eventual Sexual Content, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:43:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thermal_detonhater/pseuds/thermal_detonhater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey ekes out her existence as a scavenger in the wastes, unaffected by the war between the Resistance and the First Order, until she is forced by widespread evacuations to flee the only home she has ever known. She encounters Finn, a fugitive from the First Order who desperately needs her help, and together, the two go on a mission to transmit vital information to the Resistance. When she is captured by the warlord Kylo Ren and escapes, he becomes obsessed with her and swears he will find her, regardless of where she tries to hide. Desperate, Rey and Finn are on the run, struggling to evade the First Order and stay alive in the midst of a war fueled by forces that neither of them quite understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

If anything that Rey has learned in all her years in the desert is the absolute and unequivocal truth, it is this: ultimately, people value nothing and nobody more than themselves. This is a lesson that has been beaten into her consciousness for over a decade, branded into her mind again and again, as sure as the constant hunger that crouches in her belly. Kindness is a luxury that anyone will dispense with as soon as it is no longer something that they can afford. And in this sweltering, arid wilderness, not many can afford much of anything.

She has lived the entirety of her remembered life in the wastes, a barren expanse of land at the edge of the territory controlled by the Republic that stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. Here, the air is so thick with smog and gritty dust that it can only be breathed through a filtering mask, and the harsh wind and frequent sandstorms necessitate the constant use of goggles. The climate is so unforgiving that she almost never goes outside without covering every inch of her skin; even her short, wild mess of hair is tied up and covered with a headwrap. Rey has spent years traversing this vast, desolate country and she sometimes feels as if she could walk for an eternity and never reach its end. She knows that other lands exist: the bustling, sprawling city of Coruscant, the icy, snow covered mountains of Hoth, the lush, riotous greenery of Takodana, yet they seem like nothing but stories, beautiful and engaging, but an impossibility. She used to let herself dream of leaving, imagining her family coming back for her and whisking her away to somewhere, anywhere else, but lately all that these fantasies serve to do is emphasise the ache of loneliness that burns within her. Deep in her bones, she knows that this menial existence she has painstakingly eked out for herself is all that she will ever have. 

Every day for the past ten years has been the same for Rey, more or less. Her life waxes and wanes in the rhythm of survival: wake up, eat a half portion of lumpy, tasteless protein porridge, make the long trek to the graveyard of abandoned vehicles where she scavenges for what goods she can. She spends her afternoons sorting and cleaning her spoils, and, as the sun goes down, makes her way to Niima Outpost, carrying her staff to fight off those who would steal her scrap. There, she collects her daily ration of water from the communal pump and barters with Unkar Plutt for portions and credits, more often than not returning home without enough to stave off the gnawing hunger that is her constant companion. She takes her evening meal outside, crouching in the sand as she eats her synthetic rations, savouring the cool of the darkness after the day’s oppressive heat. At night, sleep evades her, so she huddles in the belly of the abandoned army transport she lives in, tinkering with components she has scavenged or reading the meager collection of books and tech manuals that she has accumulated over the years. Eventually, she drifts off, and awakens again to repeat her routine. This is the cycle that makes up her life. 

Before this, she lived five years in an orphanage; overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded, and spent her days competing with fifty other children for the insufficient rations, sleeping on the floor because there were never enough beds. Rey remembers those days with a sense of resentment, how the overworked staff had struggled to care for twice the number of children that the facility was equipped for, applying over and over for more funding from the government and constantly being denied. She recalls the lessons, taught from outdated, tattered books, that were the only thing in that wretched place she had loved. How eagerly she had pored over the faded pictures of faraway countries, tearing them out of the books when she could and secreting them in the lining of her sleeping bag. They were the only thing she took with her when she ran away at ten, determined to make it on her own after having had her food stolen from off her plate one time too many. She remembers nothing prior to the orphanage, knows only that she was abandoned at a transport facility just outside Niima with nothing but the clothes on her back and no information pertinent to her background but her name and age. She’s long since stopped trying to dream up a good reason for anyone to have left her like that, knowing deep down that no one who would do such a thing could possibly have loved her, and so she forces it back into the depths of her mind, concentrating on the day-to-day tasks that are necessary to beat down the ever encroaching loneliness. 

Rey works to survive with the same single minded determination that she always has, but her life is set against a shifting backdrop that grows more and more chaotic each day. She hears increasingly urgent rumors at the outpost of the war between the Resistance and the First Order. Groups of soldiers begin to pass through Niima more and more frequently, tramping dusty boots through the streets and complaining of the muggy, stifling atmosphere. Over the static that filters through her ancient radio, she listens to broadcasts that tell tales of bombings, much like the ones that devastated the wastes in another war, centuries ago. Sometimes, planes fly overhead, dropping brightly coloured propaganda leaflets that detail the excellence of one side or the other. She has never placed her hopes on the success of either army, having learned to trust nothing to provide security but her own body and mind. To Rey, both factions seem to belong to another world, separate from her isolated existence, and, although she hears of destruction in faraway lands, everything goes on much the same as always. 

Until the day that changes everything.


	2. Part One: This Age of Emptiness

The bomb goes off, with no warning, in the early evening, just as Rey is preparing to make her daily trek to Niima Outpost. One moment, she is scraping spots of rust off of an ancient catalytic converter, the next, the explosion resonates in her bones. A second later, she hears the blast, and everything starts to shake. She feels the pressure in her jaw; instinctively, her mouth clamps down as if it has been twisted shut with a screwdriver. She drops to a crouch, ducking beneath the toppled AT-AT transport she lives in. After a few moments, the rattling ceases, and she stands, anxiously looking around her to find the site of the explosion. It takes mere moments for her to locate it: the grey plume of smoke and debris rising in the distance from the direction of Niima Outpost. She stands frozen for a moment, thoughts racing. Then, against her better judgement, she sets off for Niima at a run, scrap abandoned, fueled by the single minded desire to find out _what the hell just happened._

She lives about a mile from the fringes of the outpost, and so it usually takes her a while to make the trip, lugging a makeshift sled laden with scrap. Today, though, she reaches the outskirts in record time, spurred on by the panic rising in her chest. The closer she gets, the harder it is to see through the cloud of dark, gritty smoke that pervades the area. She swipes at the lenses of her goggles with the flat of a gloved hand, but it makes no difference: her vision remains clouded, distorted by the ash and refuse. The air that filters through her breathing mask is even dustier than usual, forcing a choked cough from her lungs.

She makes her way to the center of the outpost more by memory than anything else. From what she can see, most people have taken cover, huddling behind the shelter of walls and buildings, but things seem much the same as usual for the first few minutes. She begins to become aware when she reaches the market that she is getting closer to where the explosion must have happened; the stalls and tents that she usually sees are in shambles, strewn haphazardly in the sand like discarded toys. The full extent of the devastation is not apparent until she approaches the domain of Unkar Plutt.

The junkboss resides in a towering, concrete building in the center of Niima, where he trades with scavengers, exchanging the scrap that they collect for ration packs. Or, that is, at least he did until today.

At first, Rey distrusts her own eyes, scarcely able to comprehend the scale of such destruction. Three of the walls of Plutt’s vast blockhouse have been blown out completely; the fourth is barely standing, almost completely in ruin. All around is rubble, chunks of brick and concrete having rained down on the surrounding area. The exposed ground is littered with slivers of metal and stone, and shards of glass that crunch beneath her boots. The tanks of fuel surrounding the shell of the obliterated building have burst into flames, producing a thick, cloying smoke that assaults her senses. The entire area is almost unrecognizable to her, but all of this becomes secondary the moment that, through the haze of detritus and unsettled dust, Rey begins to notice the bodies.

The first one she sees is almost unidentifiable, reduced to nothing but a sickeningly twisted mash of flesh and bone. The next is worse: a child, somehow still alive, with none of its limbs fully intact, rasping its last breaths through a blood spattered ventilation mask. She catches flashes of gore everywhere she turns: a mangled form half obscured by a pile of debris, a pair of legs extending from under a massive block of concrete, a face smashed in by a brick that has been torn to ragged shreds of skin and cartilage.

At first, the corpses do not seem fully human to her. She looks at them dispassionately, as though they are merely a mess of broken machines, gears scattered and wires tangled. When she turns to walk away, she stumbles over a cracked slab of stone. Reflexively, she extends a hand to break her fall, and it makes contact with something warm and moist. She stares blankly at the object for a moment. It is a mutilated mass of torn flesh- an arm, she realizes. She recoils, scrambling back onto her haunches, and all of a sudden it begins to hit her. _These are the people I have seen every day for years. This is the place that provides my livelihood. This is all that I have ever known, and all of it is gone._ She feels a cry of panic rising in her throat, and chokes back a scream.

Rey scrabbles to her feet and flees.

\---

When she passes the outskirts of Niima Outpost, she falls to her knees in the sand, retching uncontrollably. She pulls down her ventilation mask and vomits what little is in her stomach, choking and heaving on her own bile and the dust in the air. She tugs her mask back up as soon as she stops gagging, desperate to halt the influx of contaminated air to her lungs. For a few moments, she sprawls on the ground, unable to move, her thoughts racing in such a panic that she can not keep up with them. Then she forces herself to her feet, and makes her way back to the AT-AT, only because she can’t think what else to do.

Rey usually views her body as a weapon, honed by years of physical labour and self defense. She sometimes compares it to her staff: lean, powerful, and ready to strike at the first sign of danger. Her confidence in her ability to fight off anything that threatens is supreme, but now, even her strength seems to have abandoned her. She struggles to walk, barely making it back to her shelter before she collapses, dragging herself behind the tarpaulin cover she has erected against the back of the gutted transport.

For hours, she lays there, trying to calm her frantic mind, paralyzed by the crushing weight of what she has seen. Sometime in the middle of the night she crawls outside to splay her limbs in the sand. The wind has died down, so she tugs off her dirty goggles and looks up at the sky, muted and hazy, trying to make sense of all that has happened. _What happens now?_ she wonders. Deep down, she already knows the answer. She was lucky enough to be spared in this first bombing, and she can not afford to let what she’s witnessed destroy her. She has spent her whole life in the mindset of survival, and now things can be no different. She must not let this tear her apart, must not let herself be weak. _Would any of those people that you saw have cared at all if you were dead? Have any of them ever tried to help you?_ Still more pressing are the questions of the future racing through her head. _No water rations, no place to trade for portions...will I starve? Where will I go? What will I do?_

Somehow, in the hours just before sunrise, she falls into a troubled sleep.

\---

Rey is startled awake late in the morning by the piercing shrill of an emergency siren, emanating from the little radio transmitter she wears clipped to her belt. She unfurls her body from where she lies, just outside the entrance to her dwelling, shaking the sand out of her clothing and wiping the dust from her eyes. The sound brings back memories of constant drills at the orphanage. She recalls the sharp, controlled voices from the emergency procedure videos that every resident of Niima has seen at least a few dozen times. _“In case of attack, when the radio siren sounds, make your way to the nearest military transport facility to receive further instructions.”_

For a moment she hesitates, unsure what she should do. If she complies with procedure she will most likely be forced to evacuate, but if she stays there may be more bombings, and the next time she may not survive. And how could she survive anyway? The entire trading area of Niima has been destroyed, and without water rations and the portions she exchanges her goods for, she can last no longer than a few days. She decides that she will have to leave.

She goes about the next few minutes on autopilot: filling a decrepit pack with her extra change of clothes, replacement filters for her mask, a canteen filled with carefully hoarded water, and a few ration packs she has been saving. Rey debates taking her collection of books, but decides that they are too heavy to be practical, and settles for only one, a tech manual that for years has been her favourite. She straps her staff to her back, and ties on the headwrap that protects her from the merciless heat. It is especially stifling today; the sky is a bright and cloudless blue and the sun blazes down ferociously onto the parched earth. Looking around, things seem so ordinary that Rey struggles to reconcile the events of the previous day in her mind. It has begun to seem surreal to her; part of her feels as if she could turn around and walk to Niima and everything would be the same as before.

Rey forces herself to leave the AT-AT without ceremony, and does not allow herself to look back, knowing that if she does it will only make things harder. _It’s best to do it quickly_ , she tells herself. _Hurts less that way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I realized about 12 hours after posting the first chapter of this story that I had titled it Epilogue instead of Prologue. I swear I'm not an idiot; I was really sleep deprived when I posted it, and I went back and fixed it :P 
> 
> Next chapter, look forward to Kylo Ren POV most likely! Also some actual dialogue for a change.


	3. Out of This Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied about the Kylo Ren POV... it's coming, relatively soon. I apologize for the lateness of this. Just a heads up, there is a little bit of intense language and violence in this chapter, in case that's something you don't want to read.

  
  


It shocks her, sometimes, to think that in so short a time a life can change so completely. Just days ago she was scavenging in the wastes, and yet now her entire existence is different, as if the world that she knew was tossed upside-down and everything emerged utterly transformed. 

 

The journey from the Jakku wastes to the evacuee camp in Takodana takes a week. Rey spends most of the trip sleeping, or trying to, at least, huddled in the back of an army truck with as many others as will fit. The entire convoy only stops once or twice a day, and by the end of the first Rey’s muscles ache in protest, her body rebelling against this stagnation after a lifetime of constant motion. 

 

Upon her arrival, there is the humiliation of the forced medical examination, having to strip down to nothing in front of a pair of medics and have her entire body inspected, poked and prodded. The combination of the vaccines and pills that she is made to take and the too-rich food she is rationed makes her very ill, and for the first few weeks she can barely leave her cot and struggles to keep anything down. She is relegated to a makeshift infirmary, along with all of the other evacuees that the Resistance deems healthy enough to be worth saving. The rest are left to fend for themselves in the evacuee camp, in conditions far worse than what most of them have left behind. In the moments that she feels well enough to think about anything other than her own wretchedness Rey pities them, knows that if her luck was just a little worse she could be in the same position, but mostly she pushes sympathy from her mind, because what good does it do? 

 

When at last she recovers, she is told one morning to gather her things and is brought to the headquarters of the Takodana base. Here, she stands in line for what feels like forever, and eventually her fate is decided by a group of Republic officials. Rey is relatively healthy and intact, free from any of the birth defects and deformities that are so common in the wastes, and this is a rare thing. The Republic encourages all evacuees who are in this condition to join the Resistance, and by encourage they really mean  _ do as we say or fend for yourself _ . Rey has spent a lifetime on her own, and so for a moment she decides she’ll risk it, but then she remembers the conditions of the makeshift housing camp that is occupied by the evacuees. Almost anything sounds better to her than starving in squalor, cramped in with hundreds of others in the same predicament. The choice is easy. In the end, there is hardly a choice at all. 

 

\----

 

A medic swabs her skin with alcohol, and the stringent scent brings back memories of the vaccinations she underwent upon her arrival. It sends a ripple of nausea through her gut. She forces herself to look away as they inject her forearm with the identification chip that declares her status under the protection of the Resistance. It stings sharply, just for a moment.

 

Rey is led into a white, sterile bathroom where she has her first ever real shower. In the wastes, she washed with a little rationed water and a cloth as often as she could, but water was considered too valuable a resource to be used for bathing. Now, she stands under the shower stream and marvels at the luxury of the bountiful supply. She scrubs her hair and body with a bar of soap, careful to avoid the tender area of her arm with the identification chip. A layer of greasy dirt flows down the drain as she washes, and she grimaces as the thought of all that filth having accumulated on her person. 

 

When she exits the shower stall, she notices that her clothing has been bundled into a paper bag, and that there is a folded uniform and a towel resting on a bench nearby. She dries off and dresses, and the fabric is coarse and stiff against her skin, so unlike her old clothes, which were worn soft by years of use. She almost puts on her ventilation mask, which is in her pack nearby with the rest of her things, but then she remembers that she doesn’t need it anymore. The climate here is such that most people don’t need to wear the masks to be able to breathe, although the air is still slightly polluted. Takodana is nothing like the paradise it was depicted as in Rey’s old schoolbooks. There are trees everywhere, but many of them are dead or dying, and the general atmosphere is oppressively humid and more grey than green. She was foolish for not realizing that the photographs must have been from ages ago, before the environment was mostly destroyed by the impact of the old war. 

 

She collects her pack and bag of clothes, and when she exits the room there is a Resistance official waiting to direct her to the barracks, which are located in a separate building. When they exit the main base it is raining, as it almost always is, the air heavy with dampness and chill. Rey’s boots squish wetly in the grass, and the sound is foreign to her. 

 

Rey is escorted around the building, and allocated a bunk and a storage locker in a room lined with beds. They let her have the rest of the day “to settle in” before she begins her shifts. She will be working in a factory, she is told, manufacturing radio transmitters for military transports and aeroplanes, with the possibility of being transferred to direct military service after a few months. 

 

She spends the afternoon lying on her bed, mostly, flipping through the tech manual that she kept from her collection. She can’t focus on what she’s reading; she scans an entire page, only to realize she hasn’t taken in any of the information. After a while she puts the book away and just lays there, her mind frantic and blank all at once. She thinks that she dozes off for a moment, but she doesn’t really know. Boredom is both familiar and strange to Rey; she knows what it is to let her mind wander but is unused to having nothing to do with her hands. 

 

In the early evening, a buzzer sounds, signaling mealtime. The dining hall is packed, and the second that Rey enters she wants to turn around and leave, overwhelmed by the sight of  _ so many people _ . She finds a place to sit, crowded into a corner all by herself. The food is good; grains and vegetables and even a little meat, but she can’t eat much, her body still adjusting to a more nutrient dense diet after years of near-starvation. The room is loud with conversation, people trading jokes and stories, laughing and talking, but nobody speaks a word to her. She guesses that new recruits are common, because her presence incurs no reaction. Rather, people’s eyes slide over her, as if she is invisible. 

 

\----

 

In the middle of the night, when the barracks are dark and hushed with sleep-slow breathing, Rey lies awake, thoughts racing. Though so much has changed, her inability to sleep remains a constant. She slips out of bed as quietly as she can, flinching a little when her bare feet make contact with the cold concrete floor, and tiptoes into the adjoining bathroom. She closes the door, careful not to make a sound, and turns on the light, eyelids scrunching up as the fluorescent brightness assaults her vision. 

 

There are mirrors above the row of sinks, something Rey has rarely seen. Her first sight of her face makes something inside her stomach twist in apprehension, although she doesn’t quite know why. She barely recognizes her features: pale, freckled skin, a nondescript nose and mouth, and eyes startlingly green beneath arched eyebrows. Her hair blooms wildly around her face, thick and dark, cut regulation short at her chin. 

She climbs onto the counter, balancing precariously, so that she can see the rest of her body. Her limbs are thin and wiry, skin stretched taut over bone, although she knows she must have gained some weight since her arrival. Her legs are a mess of scars, starkly white, telling the story of childhood scrapes and numerous accidents with salvage. She does not look too long before easing back down to the floor. 

 

As she turns to leave she hesitates, stopping to gaze at her face in the mirror for a long moment. A stranger’s eyes stare back at her, uneasy.  _ Who are you?  _ she wonders.  _ What are you doing here? _

 

\----

  
  


The only thing that quiets the muted static in Rey’s head is her work on the assembly line. It comes naturally to her; after all, Rey has always understood machines better than people. She feels far more at ease assembling the wires and gears than she does talking to the girls she bunks with in the barracks, so she often lingers after her shift ends. The strict but kind-hearted supervisor, Maz, has taken a liking to her, and sometimes lets her stay after hours, tinkering with discarded components and working on old tech Maz sometimes keeps in her office. 

 

This particular evening, Rey stays well over an hour after her shift ends, engrossed in unearthing the inner workings of a battered scanner.  When Maz finally good-naturedly shoos her out so that she can lock up, it is nearing nightfall, the sun just disappearing behind the tops of the trees. 

 

The barracks Rey lives in are about a half hour’s walk from the factory, and she usually relishes the relative solitude of the journey. She’s always found that her mind works best when she’s in motion. The dirt path is thick with mud that sticks to her boots, shaded by low hanging trees, and the air is stagnant and heavy with damp. Rey, shivers, still not reconciled to a life without the sun. The intense heat of the wastes was bad enough, but the moist chill of Takodana might actually be worse. When she inhales, the cold shocks her lungs a bit. Rey is still unused to breathing without the aid of a ventilation mask. She feels strangely exposed without its constant pressure on her skin, and the silence in the absence of it’s familiar rasp is disconcerting. She is not accustomed to having so much of her face visible; in the wastes she had learned to recognize people mainly by their voices and shapes, and whatever features were visible through the bulk of their protective gear. Here, almost no one is masked, and Rey wonders at the faces, the startling openness of a place where everyone is exposed.

 

Rey is pulled abruptly from her reverie by the sound of voices, and footfalls approaching around a bend in the road just ahead. A few moments later, three figures appear. Rey recognizes the group of men instantly, and she freezes for a moment, immobilized with shock and fear. 

 

Of the residents of the evacuee camp, there is one group that most people know to avoid; the Kyuzo. This notorious gang had terrorized the wastes for as long as Rey can remember, and upon the evacuation of the region, they had been barred from military service, direct or otherwise, due to the myriad felonies on their records in the database of the Republic. After their arrival in Takodana they had taken over a section of the housing camp and tried their best to replicate the lifestyle they had lived in Jakku; extorting from all those who were too weak to defend themselves, and running a steady line of illegal substances in and out of the region. Rey has had run-ins with the group in the past, and in the wastes, armed with her staff, they had soon learned to leave her alone. Here though, all weapons are confiscated by the Resistance upon arrival, and she knows they will peg her as an easy target.  

 

She knows the three men who are approaching by name; Zuvio, Drego, and Streehn. The three are cousins, and Zuvio, one of the leaders of the Kyuzo, holds a particular grudge against her. He once tried to coerce her into giving up a particularly valuable piece of salvage, and she punctuated her refusal with a sharp blow with her staff. The only thing that had prevented him from going after her then and there was the watchful eye of Unkar Plutt, who had found Rey to be an invaluable source of quality components, and would not have taken kindly to her being attacked. Now that Plutt is dead and gone, and Rey is unarmed and defenseless, she knows that this time no salvation will be forthcoming. 

 

By the time Rey notices the men approaching, they are already close enough that it would be futile to run. When they catch sight of her, their postures grow menacing, and they pick up their pace, evidently not intending to allow her to pass. Rey suppresses the urge to shrink back in apprehension as Zuvio approaches in front of the other two, and the sadistic grin that has begun to spread across his face makes her heart race in terror.

 

“If it isn’t Rey, the stuck up little scavenger bitch. You were too good to deal with us in Jakku. What about now?”

 

Rey ducks her head and keeps walking, hoping against hope that they will let her go. Streehn steps in front of her, effectively blocking her path and forcing her to halt abruptly to avoid him. She stumbles back.

 

“Where’s your staff, Rey?” Streehn taunts. “Did you let them take it away from you?”

 

“Let me go.” Rey tries her best to sound commanding,  _ don’t let them see that you’re afraid,  _ but there is a tremor in her voice that she knows betrays her fear. 

 

She feels a pair of hands close around her arms from behind, effectively immobilizing them. Instinctively she begins to thrash wildly with her limbs, trying to escape Zuvio’s grip. Her foot  catches Streehn between the legs, and for a brief moment he doubles over in pain. Then he rises, and slaps her across the face so hard that it makes her head spin. 

 

“You little cunt!” spits Drego from a few feet away. “You’ll get what’s coming to you!”

 

Zuvio yanks her bodily against him, and she feels his breath, hot and moist, in her hair. He fumbles for a moment, grasping both of her wrists in one large, sweaty palm, effectively immobilizing her. Rey redoubles her efforts, kicking wildly and screaming with such force that her throat scratches and rasps. Streehn catches her off guard with a stunning punch to the gut, and her torso explodes with pain. 

 

Streehn laughs, sickeningly low and filthy, and the sound makes Rey’s skin crawl. He hits her again, this time in the jaw, and the impact knocks her head back against Zuvio’s chest. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, you Resistance whore,” Streehn says, and strokes his palm along her chin, right over the place he has just bruised. He clamps his hand over her mouth, effectively silencing her, and frantically she bites at it, desperate to escape. In retribution he tangles a hand in her hair and  _ pulls,  _ hard enough to make her cry out, muffled beneath his palm. 

 

Through a dizzying haze of agony, Rey hears a voice, strangely accented.

 

“Let her go, or I put one through his skull.”

 

She turns her head to see a stranger standing behind Drego, one arm in a chokehold around his neck, the other hand pressing the muzzle of a handgun against his head, fingers hovering above the trigger. 

 

Behind her, Zuvio tenses, hesitating for a moment. The sight of the gun alone is is enough to make him do a double take; firearms are so tightly restricted that even on the black market it is near impossible to get one. 

 

“I’m not sure you heard me. Let her go, or I blow his fucking brains out.” 

 

The stranger’s tone is fierce and insistent, brooking no argument. Almost instantly Streehn looses his hold on her, and Zuvio shoves her away from his body. She falls to the ground, the side of her face making rough contact with the mud. 

 

Rey looks up to see Streehn and Zuvio retreating, hands outstretched in an attempt to mollify Drego’s assailant. When the man deems the two far enough away, he releases Drego, knocking him forcefully away.

 

“Get out of here before I shoot all three of you!” the man intones, gun trained on the three Kyuzo all the while. They waste no time in disappearing back the way they came. A few moments pass after they leave Rey’s line of vision, and then her rescuer is kneeling beside her, tentatively pressing his palm against her shoulder blade. 

  
  


“Are you alright?” he asks. His voice is unlike any that Rey has heard before, smooth and resonant, so different from the harsh, clipped vowels of the wastes. 

 

She is too shocked and breathless to reply for a moment, sprawled painfully in the dust. After a brief pause she manages to find her voice again.

 

“I think so…”

 

He extends a hand, and Rey stares blankly at it, unsure of his intention.  _ He means to help me up _ , she realizes after a few seconds, and presses her own hand into his outstretched one. Gently, he hauls her to her feet, only to realize that she can barely stand. She clutches at his arm awkwardly to keep herself from falling. 

 

“Are you hurt?” he asks, his voice flush with concern. Gingerly, Rey prods at her abdomen, wincing at the discomfort of even a light touch. 

 

“Just bruised, I think. Nothing feels like it’s broken.” 

 

Tentatively she raises her head, and for the first time gets a clear look at her rescuer’s face. His skin and eyes are dark, as is the hair he wears closely cropped to the skull. He is about her height, but muscled in a way her slender frame could never match. His eyes are kind, she notices, but his cheeks are gaunt from hunger. She doubts that he is more than a few years older than her.

 

It takes a few minutes for Rey to steady herself, and when she steps away she notices that his hands are empty. She realizes that he has tossed the gun onto the edge of the path; it is half hidden in the undergrowth. She gestures towards it. “Where did you get that?”

 

He hesitates, seemingly weighing his words carefully. “A friend, he gave it to me. I don’t think it works; it isn’t even loaded.”

 

“That was pretty brave of you, to pull a bluff like that.” Rey pauses, for a moment, unsure of what to say. 

 

After a short silence, he introduces himself. “I’m Finn,” he says, extending his hand in a gesture that seems unnatural to him, awkward and unpracticed, and she shakes it just as gracelessly. 

 

“Rey,” she replies. “Thank you, for what you did-”. She trails off, not knowing how to continue.

 

“It’s nothing. You should leave now, in case they come back.” He turns to walk away, and Rey is suddenly seized with the desire to stop him, to _do_ _ something  _ to repay him somehow. 

 

“Wait!” she cries, and when he turns back, confused, she points to the gun, still lying where he has discarded it on the edge of the path. “Don’t leave it here. You might need it.’

 

He stoops to pick it up, and when he stands, she notices the clothing that he wears; worn, dark and nondescript. His lack of uniform denotes him as either a civilian or a resident of the evacuee camp, but based on the condition of his clothing, she’d bet on the camp. The residents of the nearby communities are usually a little bit more prosperous. 

 

He begins to walk away, but again she calls out to him. “Wait! You can’t go back there now!”

He stops and looks back, questioningly, and she hastens to explain. “The camp, I mean. Those three, they’re part of the Kyuzo, and they’re everywhere in there. They’d be after you the second they saw you.” Finn stares at her for a second; says nothing. She battles with herself in that moment, common sense against gratitude, and gratitude wins out. She rushes on, recklessly. “Is there somewhere else that you can go?”

 

\---

  
  


A few hours later, they are squatting on the floor of an abandoned storage shed, and she is dividing her evening rations between them. She gives Finn the lion’s share, and at first he tries to refuse, but she insists, suspecting that she’s eaten far more recently than he has. He thanks her with a smile that unfurls across his face and transforms his features, making him look years younger and about half as intimidating. They eat ravenously, with the characteristic lack of manners of those who aren’t used to having enough. 

 

When they finish, he sighs and leans against the wall, stretching out his limbs. He looks as if he could fall asleep at any moment, and Rey feels the same. She knows that she should return to the barracks before it gets to be too late, or else risk the punishment of a week of work detail, but for reasons she doesn’t quite understand she hesitates. Something about this boy, his kindness maybe, makes her want to stay.

 

Finn breaks the silence. “So, how did you end up here?”

 

Rey explains; how the First Order dropped a bomb on Niima Outpost and threatened to destroy the whole region. No one is really clear as to the real reason, but the First Order claims that Niima was harbouring fugitives. She can talk about it, as long as she reduces it to cold, impersonal facts. As soon as she starts to really think about her life there, about the people there, she starts to feel ill. 

 

Finn has a strange look in his eyes, sympathy masking something else entirely. The intensity of his gaze is a little disconcerting. After a few moments, she returns the question. “What about you? Are you from Jakku?”

 

He shakes his head. “I’m from Ibaar, originally. I’ve been all around the provinces, though.”

 

“What brings you here, then?” Rey asks. Finn pauses for a moment before responding.

 

“The First Order. I guess you could say that I got on their bad side.”

 

This isn’t unusual. The First Order is known for hunting down anyone who opposes their rigid belief system. Many of the people in the evacuee camp and even some in her barracks are those who have fled them and found sanctuary in Republic controlled territories. 

 

“Are you with the Resistance?” She doesn’t see any compelling reasons not to support the war effort. In this place, it’s about the only thing that guarantees you a full belly and a bed at night that isn’t against the law. 

 

“Not officially, but I guess anyone against the First Order is with the Resistance.”

 

She nods in agreement. Rey has no great love for the Resistance or the Republic, after all, they were content to let most of the people in the wastes live in a state of near starvation for decades. Even now, they act like some sort of benevolent humanitarians because they are hosting the evacuees, though most of the healthy ones have been conscripted into the war effort and the rest are living in conditions worse than the ones they left. But for Rey, survival has always come first, and she’d rather work for what she doesn’t believe in than starve for the sake of morals. Ideals, she knows, can only be for the wealthy. 

 

“What did you do to make the First Order go after you?” she asks, just to satisfy her curiosity. She doubts that it was anything very bad. The First Order has a reputation, rightfully deserved, for putting out bounties on the slightest of pretexts. 

 

He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it, only a dry sort of resentment. “I stole a TIE fighter, and crashed it near the Jakku border.”

 

This comes as a surprise to Rey, and she recoils slightly. TIE fighters are the preferred aircraft of the First Order, sleek and fast and deadly. She’s only ever seen one once in person, and she knows that they’re expensive. The First Order keeps their machinery under the tightest of security, and Finn is little more than a boy. How could he possibly have pulled off a stunt like that?

 

All that Rey can think to ask is “Why?”

 

“Have you ever heard of Poe Dameron?”

 

Of course she has, everyone who knows even the slightest bit about the Resistance has. Poe Dameron is the single most famous pilot in the history of this war, except for maybe Han Solo, but no one’s heard a thing about him in more than a decade, and Rey personally doubts that he’d ever existed. Dameron, however, is the star of countless Resistance recruitment leaflets. Handsome and suave, he is the poster boy for the Resistance and the favourite of its leader, General Organa, or at least he was until he disappeared over a month ago. The general consensus is that he’s dead. 

 

Finn continues without waiting for her to reply. “I met him, after his plane was shot down by the First Order and he was captured. We stole the TIE fighter and escaped, but they shot us down near the Jakku border, and he died in the crash. I never found his body.”

 

If Rey ever believed anything that he said, she doesn't now. His story is ridiculous. She looks at him in shock, incredulous, but before she can speak he cuts her off. 

 

“Don’t believe me? Maybe you'll believe this.”

 

He fumbles around inside his jacket for a moment, and pulls out a paper envelope, crumpled and folded, opening it and holding it out to her so that she can see the contents. 

 

There is a memory card, battered and old-looking. This sort of tech is rare, reserved for the higher levels of the military and those who can afford the ludicrous price. 

 

“What exactly does this have to do with what you’re saying?” she asks, her tone thick with disbelief. 

 

“This memory card contains the last recorded location of Luke Skywalker.”

 

This is absolutely unbelievable. Rey regards Finn with suspicion, the sincerity of his demeanor at odds with the impossibility of his words. 

 

“The scientist?” she says. “I thought he was a myth”

 

Finn looks at her unflinchingly, dark eyes burning into her bright ones, “So did I, until I met Dameron.”

 

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

 

“I guess you don’t. But what would I get from lying to you?”

 

She considers this for a moment. “What do you hope to get by telling me?”

 

“Nothing. All I want is for you to give this to whoever is in charge here, tell them it needs to go to General Organa.” he says, earnestly. 

 

“I can’t do that! Even if you are telling the truth, they’d never believe me. They’d probably think I’d stolen it and kick me out!” Rey’s face flushes with guilt when he looks at her reproachfully. He did just save her from a beating, if not worse...she doesn’t want to think about that. 

 

They remain silent for a while, and suddenly she thinks of the wastes, of the monotony of her life and how alone she felt. She recalls her desire to escape, a desire that has only been magnified since her arrival in Takodana. Somehow, surrounded by people, she still feels that isolation. Something about Finn takes the edge off of the loneliness.  

 

She speaks, reconciled to her decision.“Fine. I”ll try to help you, but no one here will believe anything I say. We’ll have to take it to D’Quar… that’s where the General operates from.”

 

“Isn’t that far away?” he asks, hesitantly. “How will we get there?” .

  
Rey smiles, then, thoughts racing with possibilities. “I have a few ideas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made the Kyuzo (alien law enforcement from Jakku in-verse) into a gang... I don't even know how my mind works sometimes. I've been working on this (intermittently) for like a month, and I'm still not happy with it, but I figured I would just post it, rather than overanalyzing everything. I promise I won't take forever to update next time. Also, I'm terrible at writing dialogue, as you can probably tell. Constructive criticism is appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first fic, as you can probably tell. If you have any questions or want to chat about Reylo, my username on tumblr is [thermal-detonhater](http://thermal-detonhater.tumblr.com).


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